User talk:Rkitko/Archive20

A kitten for you!

No apology necessary. Glad to hear that you are checking past changes that might have lost the synonym information.

Nadiatalent (talk) 07:56, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Chamaebatus

Hi, can you tell my why you deleted a page with this name with the comment "improper redirect". I'd wanted to add it as a redirect to Rubus subg. Chamaebatus. Thanks. Nadiatalent (talk) 13:21, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I remember that. I ran around last year deleting a bunch of those kinds of redirects to subgenera and sections. Those redirects were created when articles titled improperly without the genus name were moved to the proper name, e.g. Rubus subg. Chamaebatus, the redirect was left behind. The wisdom at the time was that it's not a good idea to have the infrageneric epithet redirect to the correct article title, since these names do not need to be unique. There are often many subgenera out there that share the same name. Perhaps that's an argument for disambiguation when needed. I don't know much about this particular case - is the section name also Chamaebatus? I don't suppose there's much harm in having the redirect; it was just a matter of cleaning up after moves (I had also taken care of correcting the incoming links). Rkitko ^(talk) 13:50, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes indeed, these things should be disambiguation pages in many cases, but making a redirect into a disambig is something that some of us do quite a lot of. A reason that I'd like to see redirect pages for subgenera and sections like this one is that in the Code of Nomenclature they are treated in some ways just like genus names, and there is good reason to believe that many of them either have been or will become genera. For those that have in the past been genera, anyone looking at an old book might search wikipedia with that name. If they just see that it is mentioned on a bunch of Rubus pages, they might conclude that Wikipedia doesn't cover the plant they are interested in. Nadiatalent (talk) 14:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Rutabaga-O-Lanterns

Hello, I saw the request for dispute resolution at WP:DRN and I think I might be able to help mediate the dispute. I have some experience as a mediator (I was even a member of WP:MEDCOM briefly) and would be interested in helping find a solution to the current dispute. -- Atama頭 17:19, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, Atama. I would welcome the mediation. Rkitko ^(talk) 13:18, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

I finally found the time to get it started, I just opened the discussion on the article's talk page. If we end up overwhelming the talk page we can always move it to a subpage if necessary. Feel free to give your opinion about my summary and to add any other issues you'd like to discuss, thank you. -- Atama頭 20:54, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Children's Museum backstage pass

The Children's Museum Backstage Pass! - You are invited!

The Children's Museum of Indianapolis is hosting its second Backstage Pass and its first Edit-a-Thon on Saturday, August 20. The museum is opening its doors to Wikipedians interested in learning about the museum's collection, taking them on a tour of the vast collection before spending the afternoon working with curators to improve articles relating to the Caplan Collection of folk toys and Creative Playthings objects. Please sign up on the event page if you can attend, and if you'd like to participate virtually you can sign up on the Edit-a-Thon page. ---LoriLee (talk) 15:10, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Peppers

Thanks for swapping in the cultivar infoboxes. :) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 03:35, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

No problem. It's something that had been bothering me for a while. And I was unsure on some of those articles whether the article subject is actually a cultivar, cultivar group, or trade designation. Some of the pepper cultivar articles could use some TLC. Thanks for the work you've put in to many of them. Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 03:56, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I too have been pretty unsure about a lot of things in those articles. :) Best wishes, Anna Frodesiak (talk) 04:27, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Edit summary

I am intrigued by the edit summary for this edit. "Updating taxobox classification to the APG III system using AWB" seems a poor description of what was actually done, which was to remove the {{DEFAULTSORT}} magic word (no idea why), remove the category indexing from Category:Dryadeae (fair enough), and to replace {{Taxobox}} with {{taxobox}} (no possible reason). You should probably be more careful to ensure that your edit summaries accurately reflect the edits you make, so that you cannot be accused of deceitful editing. --Stemonitis (talk) 06:39, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. I thought I had changed it the last time I logged on to AWB but must not have saved the new edit summary. The long series of my edits are mostly about APG III, but every once in a while I come across an article that already has APG III in the taxobox but has a few other issues. Would, "Updating taxobox classification to the APG III system and other clean up using AWB" be acceptable, since there's a range of edits I'll do, such as category clean up, removing DEFAULTSORT, and other small bits. The T to t change is only an artifact of the script (Hesperian's coding) I'm using and is meaningless. DEFAULTSORT is no longer necessary on non-biography articles since a change to the mediawiki software, "Dryas Octopetala" will categorize in the same place as "Dryas octopetala" and "dryas octopetala." And the sortkey removal was because the category is not a genus category, so the article should not sort under the species epithet. Having done thousands of these edits, though, I've never had a problem with someone accusing me of deceitful editing on the occasional article with no change to the classification. Rkitko ^(talk) 12:01, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't meaning to accuse you of deceitful editing, and I hope it didn't come across that way. I realised it must be a quirk of AWB or something similar, but I could imagine an editor quite reasonably getting annoyed if an edit didn't do what it claimed to do. Your suggested summary is an improvement, but I think any generalised summary is likely to fall into the same trap. It shouldn't say something that the edit doesn't include, and it shouldn't omit the things the edit did include. If the edit is only "other cleanup", then having "Updating taxobox classification to the APG III system" is misleading, for instance. It must be possible to override the default edit summary on an edit-by-edit basis, for the minority where the usual summary doesn't convey the effects of the edit. --Stemonitis (talk) 12:58, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh, no, not at all. You were clear :-) I just felt like I should explain myself fully. I see how it could be misleading, but one look at my edit history for that period would show hundreds of other edits cleaning up the classifications. It is possible to override the default edit summary for each edit, but I'm more likely to just skip over these small edits than fiddle with it. What do you think of a link in the edit summary to a user subpage explaining the various small edits I also do? E.g. ...and/or other edits. or See explanation of edits. Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 13:40, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

September 2011 Newsletter for WikiProject United States

The September 2011 issue of the WikiProject United States newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you.

 
--Kumioko (talk) 03:42, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

{{infobox cultivar}}

Please explain what you meant by "broke it" in this edit summary. I'm not a mind reader. The layout change was deliberate, so if that was what you meant I'll be restoring the updated code. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 11:26, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for calling it "broken." I was so shocked by the changes that it looked like it was broken. It was designed to look like the taxobox to keep the theme similar. Personally, I'd like to keep it that way. Your changes may be an improvement, but they were not discussed; there are editors at WP:PLANTS that might have some input on the changes. I suggest we discuss this at the Template talk:Infobox cultivar#August 2011 changes. Cheers, Rkitko ^(talk) 23:24, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Hello Rkitko. Myself and Melburnian have made some input into the discussion at Template talk:Infobox cultivar#August 2011 changes, and in response thumperward has made some adjustments to the new template. The discussion appears to be drawing towards a decision, so if you have any comments, it might be helpful to make them now. Cheers. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 07:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Galleries

I don't wish to edit-war about this issue, particularly with you, but I don't think you are right about the use of galleries.

• WP:IG is clear that galleries have a legitimate use in articles. "The use of a gallery section may be appropriate in some Wikipedia articles if a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images." The key in the case of Chlorophytum comosum is the last bit, i.e. "by .. individual images". It's entirely sensible in the article to have an image of a flower and an image of the fleshy roots, which are important botanically. As the article is currently short, these images cannot be placed inline in a sensible fashion. So in this case, the two images "illustrate aspects of [the] subject that cannot be described by .. individual images".
• See also Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Image_queuing, third paragraph, "create some sort of gallery section in order to deal with the original problem", the original problem being the cramming of images. At the very least this section is clear that an editor should not simply remove relevant images from an article because of spacing issues, but should move them to a gallery on the talk page.

Where there are relevant images, which are badly placed on a page due to a lack of text, my policy has been to move them to a gallery, pending later expansion. Of course the images must be relevant and all redundant images should be removed. Peter coxhead (talk) 11:02, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. It says, "...that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images." Galleries are meant to be used for a series of images and for comparisons, not to cram images into the article that wouldn't fit yet. The items in these photos can be described; because they have not yet been described in the text does not mean we should be included those images in a gallery on the page. I get your point of view that these images are useful, encyclopedic, and display certain properties of the plant that are not yet described fully in the text. But where should we stop? There are tons of images on Commons, so should we include each unique one about Chlorophytum comosum because they, too, have not yet been described? Cultivars, seed, stolons, roots, fruits, illustrations, individual flowers, the inflorescence... It balloons out of control.

I've come across particularly egregious abuses of galleries in that one user from Commons likes to promote his own photos, usually editing Wikipedia only to throw up a gallery on hundreds of articles, usually below the references section, containing dozens of images. In these extreme cases (where the article is also usually well illustrated already), do you agree with removal and a link to the Commons gallery? I can't find an example at the moment, but if I run across another one, I'll let you know. Rkitko ^(talk) 11:35, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't in the slightest dispute that galleries are mis-used on Wikipedia, and I've done my share of removing or pruning them. But you're using the "slippery slope" argument, which is always suspect. You're arguing that because some editors create ridiculous galleries, there shouldn't be any galleries at all. You say "where should we stop?" The answer is with the minimum number of images which are needed to illustrate the article. The flower is a diagnostic feature in almost all flowering plants, so an image which shows a flower clearly is almost always justified. An unusual feature of C. comosum is its very fleshy roots, so any extended article is likely to need a photo of these. It does not need endless images of different plants of C. comosum, uploaded by enthusiastic house plant owners, and of course I wouldn't include them.

The real issue seems to be about "parking" images which (a) are justified in the context of a full article (b) can't be included inline yet for space reasons. I prefer to "park" images in a gallery in the article itself, which I think can be justified by WP policies. This makes them readily available to readers – who whould always be our first concern. I accept that another, possibly slightly preferred alternative within WP policies, is to "park" the images on the talk page. However, this isn't of use to most readers.

What I don't accept is that it's right simply to remove them, as you did. It seems to me that Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Image_queuing is quite clear on this. Peter coxhead (talk) 15:03, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I acknowledge a slippery slope argument isn't a good one, but without people monitoring every article, galleries get out of control very easily, then influencing others to do the same. I don't get the point of parking the photos in a gallery in the article or on the talk page if they're available at a linked Commons gallery. That section of the image use policy seems to be more directed at images uploaded to Wikipedia and have not been or cannot be uploaded to Commons. Commons, as a repository for images, is where I think we're meant to park useful images that cannot yet fit into the article because of space limitations.

I know of at least one way to settle the immediate problem on this article. It's a very common plant and deserves a much better article than what it has right now. Do you have the time for a collaboration on its expansion? I'd be game if I had someone to work with, pushing me to work. I haven't been doing much article creation or expansion recently and it would be a nice change before I get too busy this semester. Rkitko ^(talk) 15:45, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

For me the whole point of "parking" is to allow a selection of the images available to be saved, namely those which a sensible editor will want to include in the article. Linking to Commons will often just give a mish-mash of images (some of which may not even be the right species).

I agree that expanding the article is worthwhile, because it's a very common house plant. I did find some more information and created a couple of sections, but I haven't been able to find a botanical article on the species yet. So let's both see if we can expand it and then be able to include more images.

One thing I don't like, generally, is a tall image in the taxobox, which can cause it to occupy so much of the left-hand side of an article that there's little room for other images. I'll see if I can find a better shaped one. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:24, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Image now replaced. Peter coxhead (talk) 16:40, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Good work. I'll have more time this evening to contribute. Rkitko ^(talk) 16:42, 26 September 2011 (UTC)